MEANING OF CHARLES'S CORONATION.--The coronation of Charlemagne made him the successor of Augustus and of Constantine. It was not imagined that the empire had ever ceased to be. The Byzantine emperors had been acknowledged in form as the rulers of the West: not even now was it conceived that the empire was divided. In the imagination and feeling of men, the creation of the Caesars remained an indivisible unity. The new emperor in the West could therefore only be regarded as a rival and usurper by the Byzantine rulers; but Charlemagne professed a friendly feeling, and addressed them as his brothers,--as if they and he were exercising a joint sovereignty. In point of fact, there had come to be a new center of wide-spread dominion in Western Europe. The diversity in beliefs and rites between Roman Christianity and that of the Greeks had been growing. The popes and Charlemagne were united by mutual sympathy and common interests. The assumption by him of the imperial title at their instance, and by the call of the Roman people, was the natural issue of all the circumstances. CHARLES'S SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.--Charlemagne showed himself a statesman bent on organization and social improvement. There was a system of local officers. The border districts of the kingdom were made into _Marks_, under _Margraves_ or _Marquesses_, for defense against the outlying tribes. One of them, to the east of Bavaria, was afterwards called _Austria_. _Dukes_ governed provinces, some of which afterwards became kingdoms. Their power the emperor tried to reduce. The empire was divided into districts, in each of which a _Count_ (_Graf_) ruled, with inferior officers, either territorial or in cities. _Bishops_ had large domains, and great privileges and immunities. The officers held their places at the king's pleasure: they became possessed of landed estates, and the tendency was, for the offices to become hereditary. The old German word _Graf_ is of uncertain derivation, but means the same as _count_ (from the Latin _comes_). _Mark_ is a word found in all the Teutonic languages. From the signification of _boundary_, it came to be applied, like its synonym _march_, to a frontier district. A _margrave_ (_Mark-Graf_) was a _mark-count_, or an officer ruling for the king in such a district. A _viscount_ (_vicecomes_) was an officer subordinate to a _count_. _Pfalz_, meaning originally _palace_ (from the Latin _palatium_), was the term for any one of the king's estates. The _palsgrave_ (_Pfalz-Graf_) was first his representative in charge of one of these domains. The _stallgrave_ (_Stall-Graf_) corresponded to the _constable_ (_comes stabuli_) in English and French. It signifies the officer in charge of the king's _stables_, the groom. He had a military command. A later designation of the same office is _marshal_ (from two old German words, one of which means a _horse_, as seen in our word _mare_, having the same etymology, and the other means a _servant_).